- October 31, 2018
-
Ian Terpening
- 4 min
Warranties are often an overlooked item when making a technology purchase, often because they can be very confusing. Even using Dell as an example, who is one of Valiant’s preferred vendors, there are numerous ones to choose from, each with seemingly random abbreviations, numbers, and letters in their names. The task of choosing the correct one can feel like an insurmountable task to accomplish and often leads to the question: “Why bother with them?”
Technology Fails
The simple answer to the question is, technology fails. It happens more often than you’d think, and when you least expect it to. Have an important financial report due at the end of the day? Not a problem; until your computer’s internal fan suddenly fails and shuts down. Broken hardware costs time and money to fix, presents a risk of a loss of consumer confidence, and can have a significant impact on your bottom line. Having a warranty for your Dell computer removes having to pay for new parts and decreases the amount of time it will take to resolve the problem.
Insurance for Equipment
This means that money saved on buying replacement parts for out-of-warranty computers can be allocated towards other areas of business development, like your technology hardware budget. The bottom line is, warranties act as insurance for your equipment. If a failure occurs and is covered, no problem. If it isn’t, it’ll likely end up being costlier than the worth of the warranty.
Now, you may be asking, “This can’t just be insurance, what else makes these warranties cost so much?”
Peace of Mind
Warranties, by their nature, provide you with peace of mind.
Knowing your workstation is covered means that any hardware-related hiccups you may run in to will be resolved rapidly, as all Dell warranties guarantee the rapid replacement of parts when a request is confirmed, all with free shipping. There is also an escalated priority for issue resolution with warrantied items, meaning you won’t have to wait on hold with Dell.
The real question I’ve been wanting to answer is, what Dell warranties does Valiant recommend?
The first warranty we typically recommend is the 4hr 7×24 ProSupport Mission Critical warranty. We recommend this warranty for high-profile workstations for staff members running critical business applications because it guarantees onside Dell supporting within 4 hours of a problem being determined via a phone call with a Dell technician. Mission critical status also guarantees the rapid replacement of hardware parts at no additional cost, as long as the warranty is active. All Dell servers quoted by Valiant contain this warranty option, unless specified otherwise in the setup procedure for new servers.
The second warranty we recommend is a less costly alternative to the option above – the 8hr 7×24 ProSupport Mission Critical warranty, which we recommend for standard workstations. The warranty is fundamentally the same, but with an 8-hour response time instead of 4. We always recommend having one form of the 7×24 warranty, and it is added to 90% of new workstation quotes created Valiant, with the outlier 10% being one of the subsequent warranty types.
Servers have a different purpose from workstations, and we recommend covering them with the ProSupport Next Business Day On-site Warranty. This warranty guarantees that a certified Dell engineer will be at your location the next business day in order to perform onsite maintenance for issues determined by a Dell phone technician.
Finally, we have the CompleteCare Accidental Damage Service Warranty. This warranty is reserved for items that need accidental damage coverage. It’s perfect for the VIP on the go who might not always be able to ensure the safety of their computer.
Don’t be sorry, get that warranty.
From Dell computers to network equipment like SonicWall firewalls or Meraki wireless access points, warranties ensure that you are able to quickly recover from technology problems.
All technology plans should include the routine review of existing warranties to ensure that a hardware failure is a temporary hiccup, and nothing more than a hiccup to your bottom line. If you would like to review what warranty your device currently has, you can view it by clicking here.
